Posted by Dr. Glen Browder’s four part essay on Alabama’s new racial order and its future concludes at the Birmingham Weekly. At the end are links to the other parts of the essay.
In this installment, he discusses and cites research on the current and future state of race and Alabama politics. A brief quote:
Alabama, for example, just proved itself anew as one of the reddest of the red states. However, it is clear that overt, traditional racism has disappeared from most forums of public life in our political system and contemporary standards of political behavior increasingly mute black-white conflict in the Heart of Dixie. This is neither the “Alabama forever” pledged by George Wallace nor the “Alabama dream” envisioned by Martin Luther King; but both races in this part of the country seem to have adjusted to living in a halfway house of racialized politics.
His comments on the current status of race on Alabama politics are especially useful considering the upcoming Governor’s race.
Legislative Dispatch
Purple Dot Connection
2010 Big List
2010 Senate Elections
2010 House Elections
Press Releases
Overt racism may have disappeared, or has it? There is the miscegenation clause still “hanging” around the Alabama Constitution. Then there is the “goat hill” control of county government, can’t let those locals govern themselves, heaven forbid they might want some sort of control over their county government’s destiny. Our Alabama Constitution is a hold over from Jim Crow. Federal mandates ended Jim Crow, not action from Alabama’s Bourbon Democratic Legislature.
Personal bigotry is still apparent in the eyes of some Bourbon Democrats in this statement, “why I’d vote for the devil before a Republican.” Some certainly have voted for the devil, as evidenced in public policy which supports wide spread economic socialism.
Although overt racist actions are illegal, that does not mean that personal and institutional racism does not exist, it does exist. Just ask a local Mexican American.
You must be a Roy Moore man.
Race, I think, played very little in the last presidential election in Alabama – or at least with white Alabamians. Did any Alabamians cast their votes based on race? Sure – both whites and blacks, and I’d argue more black voters voted their race than did whites. I’ll be the first to admit it happens. Is it ever appropriate for anyone to vote for or against a candidate based on race? Never. I’d same the same for gender or ethnicity.
The main question is whether President-elect Obama lost Alabama because he’s black? Absolutely not. If he’d been white, female or catholic, he’d still lost by the same margins, if not greater, for a simple reason – he is a liberal, and liberals don’t win state wide races in Alabama – at least not if they announce themselves as liberals. We like our taxes low and our government spending even lower. Anything else is destined for defeat – regardless of who’s selling it.
John, you are absolutely wrong. In Alabama, blacks usually vote for Democrats 90-10, whites usually vote for Republicans 75-25 (in Presidential races). This election, most of those black Republican holdouts shifted over to the Obama side; the final on that front was 98-2. Was most of that shift due to race? Probably so.
Whites went 90-10 for McCain. Some of those voters have always been Republicans. Others are older folks that shifted to Goldwater and Nixon because of their opposition to civil rights. But there’s something else to it. Liberal Al Gore got 33% of the white vote. Liberal John Kerry got 25% of the white vote. Liberal Barack Obama, who is considerably to the right of John Kerry on many issues, especially taxes, got 10% of the white vote. Plenty of people voted for John Mccain because of his policies, but there were plenty of whites who voted for him because they would not vote for a black man, especially one named Barack Hussein Obama.
We like our taxes low and our government spending even lower
Well, except for all the federal money that flows into the state — Alabama is a net recipient of federal tax dollars, a fact that many of our citizens choose to ignore while they’re excoriating government.
And it’s worth noting that black people have never before had the opportunity to vote “their race” for President, while white people have had that privilege in every other Presidential election since 1789.
Correction, Kerry got about 19% of the white vote. I’ve also heard claims that election results as opposed to exit polls seem to suggest that Obama received as much as 14% of the white vote here in Alabama. So still, a fairly significant decline in support from liberal John Kerry to liberal Barack Obama but potentially not as much as I initially thought.
Sanford Dem mistakenly buys into this Alabama is racist line because he buys the bad exit poll data on Obama getting 10 percent of the white vote. A lot of the posters here have already nailed the fact that those numbers are bogus and don’t match the county by county numbers in the all white counties or the white suburban boxes.
His numbers are also wrong on Gore, who got no more than about 23% of the white vote, and on Kerry, who got about 19%-20%. Obama looks like he got about 19%-21%.
Regardless of what Obama got and what Kerry got,right now, Obama is not popular with whites here. If Artur Davis had run against Sessions, he would have topped out at 43%.
But if you are trying to wargame 2010, and Davis running for governor, the issue is whether Obama becomes more popular. If the economy turns around, he could be, and that could help with the yellow dogs in North Alabama who defected from Obama.
Samford Dem usually has good analysis points, but she paints with a blue brush and therefore does skew to favor liberal philosophy sometimes, which is common on both sides.
#8 you are right. Obama stinks in 2010, Davis can kiss it goodbye. Obama makes some good moves by 2010, Davis is in. That simple.
Race baiting will only really incite people, I think. There is not as much racism here as some would have you believe, and the racism that is here spreads itself around between the political parties.
Samford Dem – I don’t see how you can make the statement that President-elect Obama is to the right of Kerry or Gore. Obama is/was the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate, according to National Journal – to the left of socialist Bernie Sanders! Obama’s tax message simply didn’t fly in Alabama. He was seen as a tax raiser, rather than a tax cutter – despite his promise to cut taxes for 95% of Americans or whatever it’s dropped to today. Plus, his campaign, associations and ideas showed he was far to the left of any other candidate for president in the past – save Mondale.
I’ll admit the exit polls show Obama lost 9% of the white vote over what Kerry received in 2004, and I’ll admit a small part of that shift was probably due to race – just as it’s true that some of Obama’s gained of 4% of the black vote over what Bush received in 2004 was due to race. But, is there any evidence you can offer that the reason for the vast amounts of these shifts was due entirely (or even partly) to race? The silence heard in the Parlor is probably a resounding NO.
What evidence do we have that Obama’s drop in support over that of Kerry was due to his ultra-liberal policies? Tax policy, position on the Iraq surge, positions on funding the troops, green policies, associations with Wright, Ayers, Soros, Acorn, CodePink and Moveon.org, church membership, position on abortion (and position on the Born-alive act), position on health care, position on Gitmo, position on habeas corpus rights for war criminals, position on judges, position on constitutional interpretation, and on and on.
Obama is a left-wing radical liberal, and Alabama didn’t buy what he was selling. If Artur Davis runs for governor based on his Washington record – not the positions he pushes on the weekends when he’s back in the state – he’ll be soundly thumped as well for one reason – he’ll be a liberal running in a conservative state.
First, it’s he not she.
Second, Kerry was, I believe, listed as the single most liberal member of the senate when he ran. Kerry didn’t promise any tax cuts for anyone; he took a much stronger anti-war position than Obama in the general election. You list all the negative so-called associations of Obama, but the fact is that absent Wright and Ayers, every single one of those individuals and organizations was a strong backer of John Kerry. Obama also never stood on a stage with Jane Fonda at a Vietnam protest or claimed American soldiers had destroyed villages in a manner reminescent of Genghis Khan.
But these are policy discussions, and we are talking about voting patterns. Obama boosted black turnout a lot. No way to know how much for sure, but exit polls suggest as much as a 20% turnout increase among that group and blacks went 95%+ for Obama. For his net gain on the state vote to be only 2%, he had to lose a lot of white votes. Look at the counties where turnout stagnated or slightly decreased this time around. Most were in the AL 4 “White Belt”: places like Cullman that may be uber-conservative socially but that have always been moderate to liberal when it comes to economic issues. Obama only got 17% of the vote in Cullman. To be fair, Kerry only got 23%. That would show a 6pt drop in Cullman, which I think is probably closer to the actual decline among white Dems statewide than the 9pt drop the CNN exit poll showed.
Personally, I think a lot of old white former Yellow Dogs finally broke down and voted GOP or stayed home this time around. As James Fields (a black man who absolutely understands how to win white votes here in Alabama), Obama’s name and different type upbringing hurt him here much more than the color of his skin. Older white folks, even some who might harbor racist tendencies, can handle a black guy named James Fields who they’ve met plenty of times who is a former Marine and a Methodist minister. It’s a little tougher if it’s a guy named Barack Hussein Obama who spent part of his youth in Indonesia, went to a church with a crazy pastor, and has only been on the national scene for four years. The fact remains that if Obama governs more like FDR than Jimmy Carter, those folks will come back home and bring plenty of others with them. If he looks like all these crises are simply too much for him, it will set things back a lot.
Should be “As James Fields has said…”